Archive for December, 2013

Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, is a mother and grandmother, a lifelong educator, a proud Blue Star mom, and an active member of her community. As Second Lady, Dr. Biden works to bring attention to the sacrifices made by military families, to highlight the importance of community colleges to America’s future, and to raise awareness around areas of particular importance to women, including breast cancer prevention, all while continuing to teach English full-time at a community college in nearby Virginia.

Dr. Biden has always said that community colleges are “one of America’s best-kept secrets.” As a teacher, she sees how community colleges have changed the lives of so many of her students for the better. As Second Lady, she works to underscore the critical role of community colleges in creating the best, most-educated workforce in the world. Most recently, she traveled across the country as part of the “Community College to Career” tour to highlight successful industry partnerships between community colleges and employers. In the fall of 2010, she hosted the first-ever White House Summit on Community Colleges with President Obama, and she continues to work on this outreach on behalf of the Administration – frequently visiting campuses, meeting with students and teachers, as well as industry representatives around the country.

As a military mom, Dr. Biden understands firsthand how difficult it can be to have a loved one deployed overseas. In Delaware, she was active with a nonprofit organization called Delaware Boots on the Ground, which helps families during times of military deployment by organizing community events to raise awareness and support. As Second Lady, Dr. Biden has dedicated herself to shining a light on military families’ strength and courage as well as the challenges that they face. She travels regularly to military bases in both the United States and abroad to visit with service members and their families.

Dr. Biden’s children’s book – Don’t Forget, God Bless Our Troops – was released in June 2012. Inspired by real-life events, the book tells the story of a military family’s experience with deployment through the eyes of Dr. Biden’s granddaughter, Natalie, during the year her father is deployed to Iraq. The book also includes resources about what readers can do to support military service members and their families.

Through their Joining Forces initiative, First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Biden have issued a national challenge to all Americans to take action and find ways to support and engage our military families in their own communities. Joining Forces aims to educate, challenge, and spark action from all sectors of our society – citizens, communities, businesses, non-profits, faith based institutions, philanthropic organizations, and government – to ensure military families have the support they deserve. At JoiningForces.gov, Americans can find many ways to take action.

In 1993, after four of her friends were diagnosed with breast cancer, Dr. Biden started the Biden Breast Health Initiative in Delaware, which in the past 18 years has educated more than 10,000 high school girls about the importance of early detection of breast cancer. Dr. Biden and the Vice President have also served as the Honorary Co-Chairs for the Global Race for the Cure in Washington, D.C. Dr. Biden continues to stress the importance of breast cancer research and early detection.

Dr. Biden has been an educator for more than three decades. Prior to moving to Washington, D.C., she taught English at a community college in Delaware, at a public high school and at a psychiatric hospital for adolescents. Dr. Biden earned her Doctorate in Education from the University of Delaware in January of 2007. Her dissertation focused on maximizing student retention in community colleges. She also has two Master’s Degrees — both of which she earned while working and raising a family.

Jill and Joe have three children: Ashley, a social worker; Beau, the Attorney General of the State of Delaware and a Major in the Delaware Army National Guard; and Hunter, a lawyer. They have a son-in-law, Howard, two daughters-in-law, Hallie and Kathleen, and are also the proud grandparents of five children: Naomi, Finnegan, Maisy, Natalie, and Hunter. The oldest of five sisters, Jill Jacobs was raised in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania by Bonny and Donald Jacobs, both of whom are now deceased.

I had often spent a day walking with John Synge, but a year or two ago Itravelled for a month alone through the west of Ireland with him. He wasthe best companion for a roadway any one could have, always ready andalways the same; a bold walker, up hill and down dale, in the hot sun andthe pelting rain. I remember a deluge on the Erris Peninsula, where welay among the sand hills and at his suggestion heaped sand upon ourselvesto try and keep dry.

When we started on our journey, as the train steamed out of Dublin, Syngesaid: ‘Now the elder of us two should be in command on this trip.’ So wecompared notes and I found that he was two months older than myself. Sohe was boss and whenever it was a question whether we should take theroad to the west or the road to the south, it was Synge who finallydecided.

Synge was fond of little children and animals. I remember how glad he wasto stop and lean on a wall in Gorumna and watch a woman in afieldshearing a sheep. It was an old sheep and must have often been shearedbefore by the same hand, for the woman hardly held it; she just kneltbeside it and snipped away. I remember the sheep raised its lean old headto look at the stranger, and the woman just put her hand on its cheek andgently pressed its head down on the grass again.

Synge was delighted with the narrow paths made of sods of grass alongsidethe newly-metalled roads, because he thought they had been put there tomake soft going for the bare feet of little children. Children knew, Ithink, that he wished them well. In Bellmullet on Saint John’s eve, whenwe stood in the market square watching the fire-play, flaming sods ofturf soaked in paraffine, hurled to the sky and caught and skied again,and burning snakes of hay-rope, I remember a little girl in the crowd, inan ecstasy of pleasure and dread, clutched Synge by the hand and stoodclose in his shadow until the fiery games were done.

His knowledge of Gaelic was a great assistance to him in talking to thepeople. I remember him holding a great conversation in Irish and Englishwith an innkeeper’s wife in a Mayo inn. She had lived in America inLincoln’s day. She told us what living cost in America then, and of herlife there; her little old husband sitting by and putting in an odd word.By the way, the husband was a wonderful gentle-mannered man, for we hadluncheon in his house of biscuits and porter, and rested there an hour,waiting for a heavy shower to blow away; and when we said good-bye andour feet were actually on the road, Synge said, ‘Did we pay for what wehad?’ So I called back to the innkeeper, ‘Did we pay you?’ and he saidquietly, ‘Not yet sir.’

Synge was always delighted to hear and remember any good phrase. Iremember his delight at the words of a local politician who told us howhe became a Nationalist. ‘I was,’ he said plucking a book from themantlepiece (I remember the book–it was ‘Paul and Virginia’) andclasping it to his breast–‘I was but a little child with my little bookgoing to school, and by the house there I saw the agent. He took theunfortunate tenant and thrun him in the road, and I saw the man’s wifecome out crying and the agent’s wife thrun her in the channel, and when Isaw that, though I was but a child, I swore I’d be a Nationalist. I sworeby heaven, and I swore by hell and all the rivers that run through them.’

Synge must have read a great deal at one time, but he was not a man youwould see often with a book in his hand; he would sooner talk, or ratherlisten to talk–almost anyone’s talk.

Synge was always ready to go anywhere with one, and when there to enjoywhat came. He went with me to see an ordinary melodrama at the Queen’sTheatre, Dublin, and he delighted to see how the members of the companycould by the vehemence of their movements and the resources of theirvoices hold your attention on a play where everything was commonplace. Heenjoyed seeing the contrite villain of the piece come up from the bottomof the gulch, hurled there by the adventuress, and flash his sweatingblood-stained face up against the footlights; and, though he told us hehad but a few short moments to live, roar his contrition with the voiceof a bull.

Synge had travelled a great deal in Italy in tracks he beat out forhimself, and in Germany and in France, but he only occasionally spoke tome about these places. I think the Irish peasant had all his heart. Heloved them in the east as well as he loved them in the west, but thewestern men on the Aran Islands and in the Blaskets fitted in with hishumour more than any; the wild things they did and said were a joy tohim.

Synge was by spirit well equipped for the roads. Though his health wasoften bad, he had beating under his ribs a brave heart that carried himover rough tracks. He gathered about him very little gear, and carednothing for comfort except perhaps that of a good turf fire. He was,though young in years, ‘an old dog for a hard road and not a young pupfor a tow-path.’

He loved mad scenes. He told me how once at the fair of Tralee he saw anold tinker-woman taken by the police, and she was struggling with them inthe centre of the fair; when suddenly, as if her garments were heldtogether with one cord, she hurled every shred of clothing from her, randown the street and screamed, ‘let this be the barrack yard,’ which wasperfectly understood by the crowd as suggesting that the police strip andbeat their prisoners when they get them shut in, in the barrack yard. Theyoung men laughed, but the old men hurried after the naked fleetingfigure trying to throw her clothes on her as she ran.

But all wild sights appealed to Synge, he did not care whether they weretypical of anything else or had any symbolical meaning at all. If he hadlived in the days of piracy he would have been the fiddler in a pirate-schooner, him they called ‘the music–‘ ‘The music’ looked on at everything with dancing eyes but drew no sword, and when the schooner wastaken and the pirates hung at Cape Corso Castle or The Island of SaintChristopher’s, ‘the music’ was spared because he _was_ ‘the music.’